


The Hux Boy

by TheJediCode



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, F/M, Flashbacks, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Prison, Prisoner of War, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 16:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14048088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJediCode/pseuds/TheJediCode
Summary: General Hux is taken in as a prisoner of war by the Resistance.  You come face to face with the Starkiller himself in your duties as a guard.  Something about him is all to familiar, though, and you're reminded of a life you left behind on Arkanis years ago... and a boy you thought you'd never see again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You guys asked for another chapter of the Anakin AU, and you got this unsolicited Hux fic instead. Whoops! ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

To say that the war had reached a turning point would have been a massive understatement.  Years of fighting, of desperately trying to outrun the First Order had finally culminated into something worthwhile.  Victory was within reach.  An end was in sight.

You had seen the fighting go on for too long.  You had been raised in the remnants of the Empire, witnessed the birth of the First Order, and watched firsthand the destruction that had been wrought upon the galaxy.  You were ready for it to end.  The galaxy deserved to finally be at peace. _You_ deserved to be at peace.

You had joined up with the Resistance at a young age.  Raised in the household of an Imperial officer, you had been brought up hearing speeches about the need for order in the galaxy, for someone to take charge.  For years you had believed it, until you saw the way the Empire had enslaved native populations and forced them to strip their own planets of resources to be used for Imperial purposes.  It was sickening.  Barely more than a teenager, you had talked your way onto a cargo freighter and left your home on Arkanis, following the whispers that said a new Rebellion had risen, that there were still people in the galaxy who weren’t afraid to resist the newly formed First Order.

Unfit for the front lines, you had filtered through a number of positions within the Resistance until you eventually settled into a job guarding prisoners of war.  The prison was well-hidden – located underground on an Outer Rim planet.  The First Order had yet to find it.

It was a quiet job, for the most part.  Most of your time was passed chatting with other guards and even the prisoners at times.  Some of them had quite interesting stories to tell.  You learned their names, you learned their histories, and you learned what they had done to deserved being held captive.   It never ceased to amaze you how many of them were regretful.  So many hadn’t chosen the path they had taken.  That didn’t excuse their actions, though, or erase their crimes.

“Listen up folks,” Poe Dameron announced, his vaunting voice carrying down the hallway that housed the cells where the prisoners were held.  If the Commander was making a visit, you knew something important was about to happen.  “We have a VIP visiting today, and it looks like he’s going to be staying with us for quite a while.  He’s currently being held in a transport shuttle with an entourage of troops guarding him.”

“We’ll be right on it, Commander Dameron,” the supervising guard assured him and began to assemble a team to fetch the new prisoner.

“That won’t be necessary” Dameron said with a smirk that drew attention to his bloody lip.  “It would be my honor to escort the son of a bitch in here myself.  In fact, I insist.  Just get a maximum-security cell ready, and make sure it’s extra maximally secured.  Maybe make it extra uncomfortable too.  Force knows this guy deserves it.”

“Will do, Commander.”

By that point, the attention of every guard and prisoner alike had been captured.  Who was this high-profile mystery man?  Part of you expected to see Kylo Ren being dragged down the hallway to the highest-security cell, but you knew that was too outlandish of a thought.  Perhaps that was _too_ high-profile.  Then again, Commander Dameron had said it was a VIP…

You heard the prisoner coming in before you saw him.  Rather, you heard the commotion that surrounded him.  There was a clatter of footsteps marching across the metal floor as an escort of six troops came into sight, surrounding the detainee.  What kind of man required six armed guards to bring him to his cell?  Poe Dameron was in the middle of it all, hauling a man by the elbow who could barely manage to stand on his own.

The prisoner was a mess.  Orange hair stuck out at odd angles, and his face was covered with blood.  However he had been detained, it had clearly not been without a struggle.  You barely got a look at him before he was thrown into a cell.  Everyone huddled around the transparisteel door, eager to see what important figure had been brought in.  You hung back, knowing there would be plenty of time to gawk at the newcomer.

“See ya later, General Hugs,” Dameron said with a mock salute.  “I hope you rot in here, you smug bastard.”

Once everyone had cleared away from the cell, you ventured over to take a look at the detainee.  He was in rough shape, seated on the floor with his back against the wall.  Long legs jutted out in front of him.  The legs of his trousers were ripped, and his knees were just as bloody as his face. You got the impression that whatever amount of force was used to apprehend him had been far too much.  The man reached up and wiped blood off his face with the torn sleeve of a black greatcoat.  You recognized a general’s rank insignia on his cuff, edges turned from silver to a sickly red color.

You walked up to your supervisor’s station.  “Permission to administer medical attention to the new prisoner?” you requested.  You couldn’t bear to look at him in that state.  Sure, he was a prisoner of war, and an important one at that.  However, he was a sentient being regardless of what he had done, and it was obvious that he was in a lot of pain.

“Permission granted,” the head guard said reluctantly.  You could tell he would have preferred the prisoner to suffer a little longer but knew it was wrong to do so.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for you to be the one to serve as the cellblock nurse.  There was an actual infirmary, but it was understaffed.  A bout of something nasty had been sweeping through the facility, and the trained medical staff were busy treating sick prisoners and guards alike.  You had spent a brief stint working in the infirmary on D’Qar when it was serving as a Resistance base.

You grabbed a first aid kit and asked one of your fellow guards to accompany you to the prisoner’s cell.  You didn’t think he would try to hurt you if you were offering to help him, but he was clearly not one to go down without a fight.  Better safe than sorry, you decided.  Once the cell was unlocked (a lengthy process due to the insistence that maximum-security measures be taken) you stepped inside.

“I’m here to help,” you said upon entering the cell.  It was always best to get that out of the way before a prisoner tried to rush you.  “I have a first aid kit.  I’m going to treat some of those injuries you have, and you’ll be sent to the infirmary if anything is really serious.”

The man didn’t say anything, but he looked at you with more spite than you knew was possible.  His expression was one of pure, unadulterated malice.

“Is that okay?” you added.  You weren’t going to waste your time fixing him up if he didn’t want you to.

He muttered a clipped “fine” which you decided to interpret as a hearty agreement to keep your temper in check.

The first order of business was cleaning him up.  You took a cloth doused in bacta and began dabbing at the man’s face.  He flinched as you uncovered cuts and gashes.  Whatever atrocities he had committed, you couldn’t help but regard him as one did a small animal that had been kicked.  He looked pathetic.  You knew this man was a general, but he didn’t have any power in his current position.  He was completely helpless, and he knew it.

“What’s your name?” you asked conversationally, dabbing at a particularly nasty laceration on his cheek. 

He didn’t answer, but he glared at you.  When he did, something struck you.  You had seen those eyes before, icy blue and defiant.  There was a familiarity that you couldn’t quite place, and you felt more at ease than you had just a short moment before.

“Listen, I’m not here to make your life miserable,” you explained.  “We’re not into torture here the way you guys are over in the First Order.  We just keep you locked up so you can’t hurt anyone else.  I don’t hate you or anything.  I’m sure you’ve done some bad stuff, but you’re still a person.  The least I can do is leave you your dignity.

“You’re not very talkative right now, but I’m sure that’s going to change pretty soon.  It gets lonely around here if you keep to yourself too much.  I’m personally not much in the habit of judging.  Nothing you say can be worse than what you’ve already done, at least in my opinion.”

You talked to him the entire time you disinfected his wounds and while you stuck adhesive bandages over his cuts.  When you were done, you took a moment to admire your handiwork, but you were startled by the view in front of you.  The prisoner looked absolutely awful.  His lip was busted, his face battered and swollen.  His lank hair was plastered down with sweat and blood.

“What did they do to you?” you whispered under your breath, brushing your thumb across one of the bandages to make sure it was secure. 

You hadn’t intended the sentiment for him.  In fact, you had thought what you said was too quiet for him to hear.  However, he had a curious look on his face that told you he heard.  He heard, and he appreciated what you had to say.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You hope beyond all else that this prisoner isn't who you think he is.

“Do you have any other injuries that might need medical attention?” you asked the prisoner. 

In response, he shrugged off his greatcoat and began to unfasten the front of his uniform shirt.  You caught sight of his bloodied knuckles and remembered Poe Dameron’s split-open lip.  You got the very distinct impression that those hands had been directly responsible.  The man started to remove his shirt, peeling the material away from a wound it had become stuck to.  You were glad he trusted you enough to take care of his injuries instead of suffering in silence  but pretended like you didn’t hear the sharp intake of breath resulting from the pain he felt.

“Blaster wound,” you noted, helping him remove the garment the rest of the way.  The bloody mark on his shoulder was just a surface wound, certainly inconsequential amongst the myriad of other scars carved into his torso.  “Luckily, it’s not deep.  It looks like the shot just grazed your shoulder.  You’re lucky it’s not serious; I can treat this right here.”

The look on his face told you that the man didn’t feel lucky.  His expression changed dramatically when you poured bacta directly onto the injury.  He flinched and recoiled from the shock.

“Sorry about that,” you told him with a frown, not feeling particularly sorry.

“Don’t apologize to that scum,” said Eddykame Chebod, the guard who accompanied you as backup. “Remember Starkiller?”

“Of course I remember Starkiller,” you told Chebod with a roll of your eyes.

“Well, this is the bastard who created it.  Say hello to General Hux.”

General Hux.  You had heard the name before, generally followed by a string of expletives.  He was perhaps the most hated member of the First Order.  He was also the most powerful aside from Kylo Ren.  Dameron hadn’t been joking about having a VIP in your midst. 

The name Hux always struck a chord with you when you heard it spit out like acid by other guards and soldiers.  It was a common name, though, wasn’t it?  Common enough in such a large galaxy.  There were surely countless Huxes scattered throughout the systems.  At least, that was what you hoped.

“Well, he’s not a general anymore,” you said.  “He’s just like the rest of them now.  No better, no worse.  A prisoner is a prisoner, and they all should get treated with a little bit of dignity as far as I’m concerned.”

“He blew up the Hosnian system.”

“And now he’s locked up and paying for it,” you snapped.  “We don’t torture, remember?  Nothing cruel or unusual. Once we do that, we’re not any better than them.”

Chebod didn’t have anything to say to that.

You cleaned and bandaged your prisoner, whose name you now knew was Hux, and helped him put his shirt back on.  The thought passed through your mind that he looked even worse bandaged up than he had before.  When he was bloody, there was no way of knowing how many injuries he had sustained.  Now, you could see just how badly he had been mistreated when he was taken in. 

When you were done, Hux was locked back up.  You took the opportunity to read through the file that had been created about the new prisoner. 

 _There are lots of Huxes_ , you reminded yourself.  _Common name.  There are probably millions of people named Hux.  Nothing to worry about._   Still, you feared what you might find.  Was it too much to ask that the universe be kind to you this once? 

NAME: ARMITAGE HUX

The universe had always been notoriously unkind to you. You only had to read the one line for your heart to break.  You closed the file and approached the cell, looking warily through the transparisteel at the man inside.  Those cold blue eyes looked back at you.  This time, you recognized them.

“Armie?” you said quietly, getting as close as you dared.  It wasn’t a question so much as a plea – a plea for him to prove you wrong.  “Armie Hux?”

“(Y/N)?” he replied, confirming your very worst fears.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You reminisce about your childhood and the boy you knew.. or thought you knew.

You couldn’t remember exactly how old you were when you met Armitage Hux.  You could remember, however, that you were a small child at the time.  He was a small, skinny boy who always looked like he was sick, regardless of whether or not he actually was.  He was nice, though, and that was what mattered to you. 

The two of you grew up together on Arkanis, the offspring of military might.  You and Armitage became fast friends, spending hours playing together.  When there was nothing better to do, you watched the persistent rain beat against the windows.  You each would choose a raindrop and watch as they trickled down the pane.  Whoever’s droplet reached the bottom first was the winner.

Safety.  Warmth.  Careless fun.  Those were the words you associated with Armitage Hux for most of your childhood.  Then, the two of you got older, and things changed. 

For a brief moment, it stopped raining.  Naturally, the two of you were drawn into the unusually calm outdoors.  The two of you were teenagers.  You didn’t spend your days racing raindrops anymore, but you were rarely found outside of each other’s company.  You hadn’t been exploring for long when Armitage – or Armie, as you always called him – tripped and fell in the mud.  You followed after him as he went into his house to change clothes.  As an ever-present fixture in the Hux household, no one batted an eye as you traipsed through the house with your muddy shoes.  The hired help would always smile and shake their heads, but no one ever complained.

You sat on Armie’s bed while he changed his shirt, suddenly realizing you were too old to be in a boy’s bedroom while he changed clothes but not really caring as much as you probably should have. You weren’t children anymore, and that was evident when you looked at him.  He wasn’t as scrawny or small as he once was.  He was still thin, but you could see wiry muscles where there had once been only bones.

That wasn’t the only thing that stood out to you, though.  The changes his body had undergone didn’t distract you from the bruises that covered his torso or the angry red welts on his back.  You didn’t ask.  It wasn’t because you didn’t care, though, it was because you had always suspected something was wrong.  Brendol Hux always yelled at his son a little too loudly, spoke to him a little too harshly, and scolded him a little too gleefully.  It wasn’t a stretch of the mind to imagine that he was physically abusive to Armitage as well.

Just like you weren’t entirely sure how old you were when you became friends with Armitage Hux, you couldn’t quite pinpoint an exact date when the way you interacted underwent a dramatic shift.  You just knew that one day you were chatting idly and the next you were kissing him in his bedroom floor while his hands explored your chest… and they didn’t stop there.  Things progressed between you rapidly, and suddenly, you realized you had become something much more than friends.

Every time he took his shirt off, you noticed more bruises, more red marks.  You were too naïve to realize what was happening.  It took you months to figure it out, and even then, it was only because of his sudden black eye.

His father knew about what the two of you were doing.  Of course he did.  You were forced to stop spending time together soon after that.  You didn’t see him again before you left Arkanis, and for years you wondered what had ever happened to Armitage Hux. 

Now you knew.


	4. Chapter 4

When you looked at Armitage Hux now, locked in his cage, you weren’t sure how to feel about him.  Before you knew his identity, he was just another prisoner.  You had shown compassion to him, even though you knew he had done wrong.  Now that you knew this detainee was a man you had once called your closest friend, you regarded him with something close to disgust.  He had always been so gentle, so kind.  Now he was responsible for the slaughter of an entire star system. 

You knew a lot of good people who were on Hosnian Prime when the Starkiller superweapon was fired.  Knowing that Armie Hux was the one who delivered the death sentence caused something inside of you to break.  How was it possible that the boy who had taken so many blows had delivered one so fatal?  What had happened to him after you left Arkanis that transformed him into the sort of monster who remorselessly incinerated planets?

“Is this what you’ve become?” you asked softly, pressing your hand against the transparisteel door. 

He rose slowly and stood to face you, the pain it caused him to stand showing obvious on his face.  “I could ask you the same question.” 

His voice was strained, deeper than you remembered it being, more authoritative than you ever imagined it becoming.  It startled you to realize he sounded very much like his father.  

“What happened to you?” you wondered, shaking your head.  “This isn’t the Armitage Hux I know.”

“You’re right,” he sneered.  “I’m not a child anymore.”

“You’re a monster.”

“No,” he corrected, “I’m a man – a man with the power of gods.”

“What power?  You’re locked up in a prison cell.  You have no rank here, no troops to command.  You’re a prisoner just like everyone else in this facility.”

“I won’t be here long,” he assured you.

“You sound so sure that someone’s coming to rescue you.”

“A fleet is already on its way.”

“You don’t know that,” you accused, reading the expression on his face.  It may have been a lifetime since you last saw him, but you still knew all of his tells.  “For all you know, nobody even cares that you’re gone.  They probably assume you’ve already been executed and someone has already been promoted to take your place.”

“Don’t you wish that were the case?”

“You disgust me,” you growled.

“Then your opinion of me has certainly changed since the days when you used to beg me to –”

“Don’t you dare say another word,” you commanded, tears forming in the corners of your eyes.  “If I had known what you were going to become, I never would have let you lay a finger on me.”

“Then it must strike you as especially unfortunate that you allowed me to do so much more than that.”

“Starkiller,” you spat, hurling the name at him like it had the power to slaughter.

“Is that supposed to insult me – branding me by the name of my greatest accomplishment?”

“Accomplishment?  Your _accomplishment_ destroyed lives.”

Hux smiled in a way that made you wince.  “That was the goal, yes.”

You couldn’t believe it.  You had wondered for so long what had become of the boy you knew on Arkanis, and you now had an answer: he was dead.  Armie Hux was long gone, a fleeting memory of someone you had cared for deeply once in a past life.  The battered man in a First Order general’s uniform wasn’t the boy who bore the marks of an unloving father’s anger.  The boy hadn’t deserved the beatings, but this man earned every last bruise.  You wished in passing that whoever shot him had taken better aim.

You looked at him now, and there was no pity, no compassion.  You felt nothing for this man besides complete revulsion.  Just like the poor souls inhabiting the Hosnian system when the Starkiller weapon was fired, your friend was dead, and the man in front of you had killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END
> 
> I feel like I write a lot of very pro-Hux fics, and I wanted to explore another angle of it in which he isn't painted in such a nice light. Don't get me wrong, I love Hux as a character, and that's why I write so many Hux/reader fics. However, that's a very idealized version of Hux. The picture of him that is presented in canon is ruthless, self-preserving, and cruel. He commits unspeakable atrocities and doesn't show any remorse. I wanted to write a story where he is still the "love interest," so to speak, but his actions aren't condoned. I like to think of this as the opposite of all my other Hux fics. 
> 
> It captures my conflicted feelings about Hux. I love the complexity of his character, his duality as a mistreated individual and the one who mistreats others. There's that part of me that sees him as a damaged child that just needs to be fixed but also a part that wants him to suffer. I have very divided emotions about him. I recognize that he's a terrible person, and I would 100% hate him in real life, but as a character, he offers so much. There are so many facets to who he has been created to be that it seems impossible to form a solid opinion on him one way or another. The depth that makes him interesting is also makes me feel gross because I try to justify his actions, which are unjustifiable. I love the way his backstory and most recent characterization take a character that is otherwise just a stock villain and makes it possible to have sympathy for him and the way he behaves.
> 
> I just realized that I've turned what was originally supposed to be a little explanation of why I wanted to write this story into a rant about why I love Hux so much. Sorry!


End file.
